Despite the manual labour undertaken, the women were not provided with overalls, and White's son later recalled that she wore "her own "brogans", gloves, and an old cotton dress" to work at the Mound.
[8] The Irene Mound project was led by a series of trained archaeologists, but records also state "the high quality of the excavations by a workforce of all African American women,"[9][10] of which White was one of the few named.
[5] A report of the work written by Joseph Caldwell and Catherine McCann, published in 1941, noted in its preface that:Most credit is due... to the continuous efforts of the personnel of the project, both in the field and in the laboratory.
[11]Scholars such as Cheryl Claassen have noted that the employment of African American women in physical archaeological work by the WPA rested "on a racist definition of womanhood and femininity", and left a mixed legacy of "benevolence and malevolence".
[5]Project such as TrowelBlazers have also highlighted Gussie White, and other women in the history of archaeology, geology, and palaeontology, as deserving of more recognition and further study.